The aim of this thesis is to examine the theoretical developments on social entrepreneurship. Our purpose is to create a better understanding of the phenomenon leading to new insights. We have categorized the knowledge of the concept into social economy, social ownership, social innovation and social missions. Drawing from our theoretical review we have chosen four empirical illustrations, Grameen Bank, Wikipedia, Basta Arbetskooperativ, Jörn Hälsogemenskap, and we have shown how these fit into the general description of the social entrepreneur. With help of our illustrations we show that it is complicated to pin point the core of social entrepreneurship as they each have separate structures, innovations, social missions and operate close to different sectors.

The retail banks are usually looked upon as conservative. Since the launch of internet banks in the 90's they have not developed much. Meanwhile the internet is developing in a fast pace and social websites are increasing in popularity. The purpose of this essay was to investigate how internet banking will develop in the near future based on interviews, literature and trend studies. With web 2.0 techniques the internet bank could develop to help the costumers take more informed decisions regarding their economic situation.

This essay aims to examine and compare Swedish and Norwegian social work with children. It is a comparative study between two social welfare offices, in districts with similar population and problems, one located in Stockholm and one in Oslo. The main questions were; how is the work organized and carried out, what type of help and assistance is available and what kind of discretion and powers do the social workers have. In our essay we used qualitative methods mostly based on interviews, vignette questionnaires and documents, but also written research. In our analysis we used modern organisation theory and street level bureaucracy to seek explanations.The two welfare offices have similarities and differences.

The recent decades have been characterised by a trend where the public sector's been inspired by several methods and strategies from the private sector. The public library is in this case no exception. In this context there are different perspectives on whether or not this will lead to a dramatic change of the role and values of the traditional public library. The aim of this master's thesis is to make a contribution to a deeper understanding of the ideological conflicts within the Swedish public library and its relation to the market. In the literature of library and information science I have identified two separate discourses representing two contradictory systems of meaning concerning this relation.

Before 1944 homosexuality was an act of crime and you could be sentenced to prison for up to 2 years. This law only included men, women where not thought having homosexual activities. Although homosexuality was not a criminal act after 1944 it was still on the list over Swedish diseases, a list maid by the Swedish board of social affairs.The years between 1978 and 1984 a study of the homosexual life in society was maid. The most important thing that this study showed was that homosexuality means that you love someone of your own sex, and that you aren?t different from the rest of the society, except that you choose to love someone of the same sex.The work for equality between these two groups started after 1979 when the Swedish board of social affairs took homosexuality of their list over Swedish diseases.

The purpose of this essay is to examine how gender rolls influences the culture of substance abuse among women and their social situation. To demonstrate this we have concentrated our research to relate how scientists and the media describe problems of abuse among women. The method we used in our research was qualitative and we gathered information through literature, reports and articles.Our main questions are:Do the social attitude toward women and men differ and how does it affect problems of abuse among women? Do women use alcohol in a different way than men? How do social reactions and restrictions influence women? We also want to examine what position women substance abusers have in society. What similarities or differences are there between the image of women in general and women with substance abuse?The main result of the study is that we found discursive connections that show a rectification among scientists concerning substance abuse among women.

This is a qualitative interview study about intellectually disabled parents and their children. I have conducted interviews with six professional staff who have some experience working with intellectually disabled persons. In my investigation I used vignettes and those I interviewed had to read the same story about Anders and Britta in preparation for the interview. The six persons whom I interviewed were: a midwife at a mother care centre, a nurse at a child health centre, a social welfare officer at a rehabilitation centre, a "LSS administrator" at a local authority, and two social welfare secretaries. One of the two welfare secretaries works to assess the social situation of children and the other one works with fostercare.The conclusion that I have drawn is that the relationship between intellectually disabled parents and their children is very important.

ternal communication in an organization by using CSM Communication Situations Model [18[upps-01.gif The topic of this master thesis is internal organizational communication and factors influencing the way people in an organization communicate with each other. The purpose of the study is to, by using a specific model called Communication Systems/Situations Model CSM, identify the social context of a given organization and examine how it relates to the dimensions of communicational behaviour which are presented in CSM. We would also like to see how the different parts of CSM affects the choice of communication channels. The thesis is based on interviews with eight employees in the specific organization, whom we have asked a number of questions regarding how they communicate with each other and through which channels. The results show that the social context is very informal within the organization and the relationships between the employees are very open and personal.

This essay deals with development in Latin America. We have picked out some factors that the theories in development theory emphasize on. The first section of the study consists of a statistical analysis, were the main purposes are to study the relationship between the independent variables and the dependent and to choose which two countries we should focus on in the next section. The countries we decided to study were Costa Rica and Nicaragua, because these countries have shown very different levels of development. From this study we have concluded that political stability, economical investements and human investments are the most important factors when creating development..

The aim of this thesis is to illustrate the principal problem of the study of national self-images and by questioning the congruent existence of one in the case of Sweden. Through the use of qualitative method and semi-structured interviews the ambition of the study is to compare and to understand the national self-images portrayed in a major Swedish town, Stockholm and to that of a smaller town on the countryside, Sjöbo. A social constructionist approach in co-operation with key temporal and spasial dimensions are used to penetrate the interviews at hand. The main conclusions drawn from this study highlights the difficulties in addressing the concept of a congruent national self-image. Several major discrepancies appear in the analysed material, mainly in the past and the external dimensions, both from a regional approach, but also very much within the local entities themselves..

Girls in honour cultures have been the subject of many studies and are often debated in the media. The purpose with this study was to focus on boys in honour cultures. I wanted to understand the situation of boys in honour cultures with a perspective of the rights of children. My central questions were: How is it to be a boy in honour cultures? Are boys in honour cultures exposed? How are they exposed? My study was a qualitative study in which I interviewed four professionals who meet boys in honour cultures in their work.

This essay deals with 18 year old boys´ experience of their usage of pornography. My main focus was the pornography found on Internet, which includes pornographic films and nude pictures.Both developmental and social psychological perspectives were applied in the study. These theoretical perspectives were chosen, because boys´ view of sex, especially during their adolescence, are influenced by the increased supply of porn and that boys understanding of porn are influenced by values present in our society. The methods used were three focusgroups and a short survey with simple questions regarding pornography. The choice of methods was based on my standpoint that an open discussion concerning porn was less offensive of integrity, in comparison of working with individual interviews.

This thesis is set out as a testing of the crosscutting cleavages theory on twocontemporary cases. The aim is to test the explanation process of the crosscutting theory applied to the political and social situations in Belgium and Switzerland and furthermore to examine potential conflicts in pluralistic states. Our main questionis: How can the crosscutting cleavages theory explain the different outcomes ofsocial coexistence, even with the states numerous similarities? We have examined the two federal states through their social divisions of language, region, religion and socio-economy. Our findings show that both Belgium and Switzerland possess divisions in the above mentioned variables, which in most cases are cumulative structured.

The purpose of this thesis was to examine the relationship between feelings and visualizations of climate change. A case study was done on visualizations of climate change from a web page concerning climate change published by the Swedish newspaper Expressen and from the American photographer Gary Braasch?s web page ?World view of global warming?. The thesis is based on the article ?Emotional anchoring and objectification in the media reporting on climate change? by Birgitta Höijer.

This study is an attempt to shed light on the importance of fiction as a bridge between different cultures and traditions. The objective of this essay is threefold. First it explores the potentiality of fiction as a communication channel between different cultures, societies and social groups. Secondly, it studies the availability of foreign fiction in Swedish language. And thirdly it tries to approach and analyze the structures and mechanisms behind that availability.